


Memento Mori

by GirlWhoWrites



Series: Memento [1]
Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, F/M, Gen, Human!Alice, Tragedy, implied depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-02-13 22:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12993402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlWhoWrites/pseuds/GirlWhoWrites
Summary: AU. The first time I saw my death, I was seven years old. Mary-Alice Brandon has always known where she would die.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> So, there was an unintended hiatus. But I finally finished my degree, which is exciting! Shadow to Light is being difficult, but I hope to get the next chapter up before the end of the year! Memento Mori is completely done, so it will be updated regularly, and completed before Christmas. 
> 
> Memento Mori was written to put a spin on the usual ‘human and vampire’ fic tropes (not that I don’t love ‘human!Alice’ fics. They are like catnip, honestly. I’ve started like 4.) Most of the notes will come at the very end, or will be found on my twilight tumblr.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [lexiewrites](http://lexiewrites.tumblr.com) or [goldeneyedgirl](http://goldeneyedgirl.tumblr.com) (my twilight-only blog), and I’m happy to chat about all things Twi-fic related.

 

_“Seeing what scares you for what it is does not lessen the terror._

_It still has the power to break your heart, over and over again.”_  

**Teri Terry**

****

If you knew how you were going to die, how would you live your life?  


Would you do anything special?  
 

Would you do it for yourself or for others?  
 

Would you greet it with fear, or with grace?

   
I don’t think anyone really knows, honestly.  
 

Not until they face it.

* * *

  _ **Before  
**  _

The first time I saw my death, I was seven years old and I was at my grandmother’s funeral; it was just a flash of images, of blood and fear and the rain. I remember crying so hard, my father had to carry me out of the church.  


Everyone thought my tears were for Grandma - even though I barely knew her, lost amongst her other grandchildren.

   
Or maybe it was the trauma of the open casket, even though she just looked like she was sleeping, and I barely glimpsed her.

   
I remember my father trying to calm me down in the rain; not being able to catch my breath, or even really explain what the matter was.

   
It was still hazy back then, like a water-smeared photograph, since nothing was set in stone.

   
The future could still change.

   
I could still live.

 

* * *

 

The second time I saw my death, I was nine, and putting on my bike helmet. My neighbour Carrie was already riding her bike around the street; I was too slow, she said. We both wanted to be good enough to tackle the ramps and jumps down at the park; the neighbourhood boys said girls weren’t good enough to ride there.  
 

I remember her perfectly, in those moments - her long blonde hair that was so beautiful and perfect; her pink and white cruiser with tassels on the handles, a white basket on the front, and an endless collection of beads on the tires was all so wonderful. It all matched her pink and white outfit perfectly. I had longed for her beautiful bike and clothes and hair. She was the girl I wanted to _be_.  
 

But instead, my black hair was tightly cinched in plaits, and I was restricted to riding my bike in my ‘play clothes’: worn out t-shirts and shorts. My bike was a cacophony of neon colours, but I had no tassels or beads, and my basket was a disappointing brown. My helmet was green, something that could not be made up with my name spelt out in glitter-glue letters. I fell far short of the mark within the social hierarchy of fourth grade girls.  
 

The street I grew up on was a cul-de-sac, often the place for the neighbour kids to gather and play kick-ball or softball. We had annual street-wide celebrations for all the big holidays, and more than once had we transformed the road into an endless, coiling hopscotch game with rainbow chalk. There was minimal traffic so deep in suburbia, and no reason to pay attention when Carrie turned her bike off the curb to ride across the street.  
 

I don’t remember what she called out to me as she went – was she going home, had I taken too long? Was I no longer a desirable playmate? Was she getting something to drink, a snack?  
 

The flash of blood-pain-fear hit me suddenly, and all I could smell was wet forest and dirt; the rain falling onto my face and rolling down my cheeks. I remember gasping for breath, as if I couldn’t get enough oxygen in; that it wasn’t my shoe laces tangling in my fingers, but leaves and moss and roots of this terrible forest.  
 

The sound Carrie’s body made when the car hit here wasn’t loud enough for anyone else to take notice, but it was enough to break me out of whatever had come over me. It sounded dull and unimportant: the time my basketball landed on my mother’s windshield had sounded more dangerous.  
 

There was a squeal of surprise from Carrie’s mouth, the crunch as she hit the windshield, the clunk of her beautiful bike dragged under the car, and finally – _finally_ – the thump-crack of Carrie’s poor head meeting metal.  
 

It took only a few seconds but it was too much, as if something so horrible shouldn’t fit into the time it was allowed.

   
I knew the driver; he was a neighbour. He should have known better than the drive so carelessly into our street. It was only a few years ago that he would have been playing softball with us. He was struck dumb, bone-white, in the driver’s seat as if he could not process what had just happened.  
 

Carrie’s body slid slowly off of the front of the car, to collapse on the wreckage of her beautiful, ruined bike. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted and blood-smeared. White bone stuck out of her dress obscenely, and her pretty blonde hair was smeared with blood and other stuff I did not want to consider.  


The front wheel of her bike was still spinning.  
 

And I finally screamed.

 

My death still didn’t have a time or place, but I finally understood what I was being shown.  
 

Death comes for everyone in the end.

 

* * *

 

I was ten when my fate was sealed.  
 

I saw it all, as crisply as if it were happening at that moment, as if I could reach out and touch the leaves and the mud, could taste the rain on my lips. Smell the blood that leaked from me, leaving me feeling as cold as ice.  
 

Whether or not such a thing as destiny existed, this was to be mine.  
 

It would happen and there was nothing I could do to change it.  
 

There was no point screaming anymore.  
 

There was no one who could save me now.

 

* * *

 

I’m sure you think that I had a very disturbed childhood, from my recollections.  
 

It’s not normal to see death everywhere. It’s not normal to watch your friend get hit by a car on a fall afternoon.  
 

Or to know that you were going to be buried in a shallow grave.  
 

But I knew nothing else.  
 

And anyway, my upbringing was kind of ordinary back then.  
 

I had two parents, a younger sister, and a dog. My father ran a huge import-export company; my mother had been an Olympic-hopeful volleyball player before she got pregnant with me, and now juggled housewife-duties with motivational speaking, and training other potential prodigies.  
 

Every Friday night, we’d go to the movies and out for pizza; every Saturday we’d go to one of my sister’s swim meets, and every Sunday we’d go to church. I loved ballet and gymnastics, and my sister loved swimming and dance. The summer I was nine, we went to Disneyland. The winter I was eleven, we went skiing.  
 

We were nothing special. The biggest problems my parents had when I was young were my father’s long work hours and impromptu business trips; my mom’s hit and miss cooking, and my sister and I bickering.  
 

There was never any sign that it would all fall apart.  
 

And there was never a reason for why I was such a _freak.  
_  

* * *

 

It was the very worst-kept secret that Mom regretted never making it to the Olympics, not even once.

   
She’d trained for years with her team; some of them had grown up together, gone to high school together, and they’d _finally_ made it. Years of blood, sweat and tears; all those hours of training and they finally had their chance to win the gold and live up to the incredible potential they’d had when they were just blonde freshmen, wanting to be _better_ than the cheerleaders.  


Her best friend had been on that team – my ‘Aunt’ Jaime. They still had coffee twice a week, spent hours on the phone together; our families celebrated holidays together. Jaime had made it to the games, twice, and had the bronze medal to prove it – framed and hanging in her sitting room. She’d married a fellow athlete, and produced three blond sons - who were equally as athletic - and was content as a housewife.  
 

I often wondered if Jaime could hear the edge in my mom’s voice, every time they spoke, the sugary sweetness in my mother’s voice, that covered something that wasn’t sweet nor kind. It was a vile jealousy, a desperation to prove that her potential wasn’t wasted, her life hadn’t been ruined because of me. That she wasn’t the posterchild for someone who peaked in high school.  
 

I knew – we all did - that if she could do it all over again, I wouldn’t be here. A trip over state lines and I would have been nothing; a wisp of a thought; a blunt lesson - it wouldn’t have been a decision that weighed her down for very long.  
 

But maybe that’s what it was. She knew, instinctively, that I was abnormal. A freak. And she wished and regretted hard enough that the universe finally heard her.  
 

And I had to go.

 

* * *

  
Up until I was ten or eleven, my freakishness was easy to hide. The visions were very rare, and I could easily conceal them as me not paying attention. I wasn’t stupid enough to tell anyone yet. I thought, maybe, they’d go away.

 

I mean, some of my teachers thought I had attention problems, and sometimes my parents got frustrated because I was always distracted. But that was okay. I was just dreamy, vague Mary-Alice Brandon, who somehow managed to be hyperactive and absent-minded at the same time. I had ‘imaginary friends’ longer than was probably appropriate, and a vivid imagination, but nothing that made me look anything worse than quirky.  
 

I thought they’d go as I grew up, the way magic powers in my favourite movies and fantasy books were only for the ‘pure of heart’. But they didn’t. I knew about toys that hadn’t been released, new students, the weather – I even won several school contests guessing the amount of candy in a jar because I looked ahead to find the answer. I didn’t have enough control of them to use them for anything helpful, like school tests or accidents, like when my father broke his foot.  
 

For the most part, though, I was just normal. Overlooked by my parents, unimportant to my teachers, and with no particularly special relationship with my extended family. When I got older, I did idly wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had visions.  
 

I didn’t need to: my childhood wouldn’t have really changed that much.  
 

* * *

 

By the time I was fourteen, I felt like life was going too fast, that we were speeding completely out of control.  
 

My visions started striking me anywhere, anytime. Not just the death one – that was triggered by certain things, like the rain. No, these were new. Like, I’d see Mom lock her keys inside her car, or Cynthia sprain her ankle.  
 

My mother talking about me with my aunt.  
 

My eldest cousin taking something in a club, and ending up in a coma.  
 

Our neighbour stoically punching his wife for some forgettable error.  
 

My father in bed with a diminutive blonde.  
 

And… I couldn’t take it anymore. I _couldn’t_. I had to tell someone. My mom. She would help me, I was certain, even with the slight worry in the back of my mind. She’d hug me tight, and tell me it was fine, I was special. We’d talk it out, and then get ice cream, because that’s how she always fixed problems Cynthia and I had.  
 

It didn’t happen like that, when I confessed everything. I don’t know why, exactly, I didn’t tell her about the death vision. But something stopped me. I only told her about the ordinary visions, about the smaller things that I saw. She stared at me as I confessed, my words tripping over my tongue, tearstained and frightened.  
 

I thought she would help me, reassure me that it was okay, even if it wasn’t fixable.  
 

But she didn’t. There was no hug, no proclamation of love, or ice cream. Just my mother’s pinched face, her hand gripping the dish towel, and the silence in the wake of my confession.  
 

I heard her telling my father that night, crouched on the landing. My father sounded waspish, annoyed, and I realised with a sinking feeling that my instincts had been right. I never should have told them.  
 

Afterwards, Mom dragged me to doctors, who spoke of tumours, epilepsy, all manner of terrible diseases, until all the tests came back negative.  
 

When they sent me to a shrink, I tried to learn not to tell what I saw, to smother it down like dirt on a fire, because no one believed what I was seeing what true.  
 

No one _wanted_ to believe what I was seeing could be true.  
 

And if I wasn’t sick, then I had to be crazy.  
 

Mom and Dad never spoke about it again with me. It was just never mentioned. The shrink appointments didn’t last long, and other referrals were discarded. But suddenly I was strictly supervised – certain books were confiscated, television shows banned; I had to be getting my wild ideas from _somewhere_.   
 

Everyone thought that it all went wrong for me on that last day at school, but it was before then. Things very rarely go wrong all at once, like a fantastic cataclysm. No, misery is made out of one hundred tiny actions, death by a thousand cuts.  
 

It wasn’t all my fault, really.  
 

We were, essentially, a normal family. That doesn’t mean we were a happy family. Not by then, at least.  
 

Really, our last good day was when Cynthia went to her swim meet and won. I mean, she won a lot of her meets – her bedroom was crammed with trophies. I preferred not to compete in gymnastics, so it was Cynthia that Mom focused all her energy on, encouraging her to be the best. The top coaches were hired, and she was at the pool so often, the smell of chlorine seemed to permeate the house.  
 

That weekend, it was the finals. It was either the beginning of the real competition – kids from all over the state were swimming – or the end of the competitive season. The lucky kids were just grey from nerves – the rest were in the bathroom, puking. I knew a lot of the families in the swimming set, thanks to Cynthia’s many years in the pool, and a lot of them were making their kids sick with the sheer pressure. Hell, Cynthia and I had both noticed friendships dissolve when Cynthia’s rank in her swim team started to rise. But Cynthia was quietly confident. I always envied her of that – the total assuredness that whatever she threw into the ring wouldn’t just be enough, it would be the _best_.  
 

And she absolutely demolished the competition. She was the smallest on the podium, with a pageant-worthy smile, clutching a fistful of gold metals, a trophy that came up to her knee, and the knowledge that she’d be representing Mississippi in the nationals. Mom was teary, clutching her camera, and Dad bought her a big bunch of yellow roses. I stood on the railings and held up a sign with ‘Cynthia Brandon’ written on it in gold and blue letters, and later, helped her rearrange her bookcase so she had somewhere to put her trophy.  
 

Her photo was in the paper – local _and_ state – and on the cover of several regional sporting magazines. Mom bought half a dozen copies of each, and framed each picture, each article, hanging them prominently around the house.  
 

Walking around our house, it was almost like my parents only had one daughter. My presence was shuffled to a couple of aged family portraits, and one posed photograph of me at a ballet recital.  
 

Mom just told me that when I won a medal, she’d put my photos up, too.  
 

* * *

 

That’s when the bad days slowly crept in. My dad was travelling back-to-back, striding in to refill his suitcase, and leave behind discontent and laundry. When Cynthia wasn’t at school, she was at the pool, endlessly training. My mother’s resentment at being left behind by my father, and playing chauffeur to an increasingly tired and bratty Cynthia, seeped into every room.  
 

It was inevitable that I’d be drawn into the bubble of unhappiness.  
 

And in the end, it was something completely inane. I walked into my parents’ room to ask mom where my pink sweater was. She was just sitting there on the end of the bed, with one of my dad’s shirts in her lap.  
 

The collar stained with deep red lipstick. Not the cheery pinks and nudes my mother favoured. This was the colour of wine, of roses, of sin.  
 

“Mom?”

   
She looked up at me, her eyes red. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, and she just looked… old. Worn out, and faded. Raw and vulnerable, without her armour.  
 

“Did you know?” she asked in an unexpectedly sturdy voice, looking at the shirt again.  
 

Was she asking me as a daughter, or as the girl who saw the future? She hadn’t believed me before, and now her nephew was learning how to talk again; our neighbour kept blaming her black-eyes and broken limbs on ‘the basement stairs’.  
 

And I knew _exactly_ what she thought of me.  
 

“Does it matter?” I asked, with that special brand of teenage haughtiness, born out of resentment, guilt, and fear.  
 

She shook her head and looked back down at the shirt. “I don’t know where your sweater is, Mary-Alice,” was all she said in response.  
 

I wore my blue sweater instead.  
 

* * *

 

That was the true beginning of the end: a shirt stained with lipstick, and the closest either of my parents ever came to acknowledging my visions. Mom clearly decided I had taken Dad’s side, and treated us both like traitors. Dad blamed me for Mom discovering his dirty little secret.   


As if I were at fault, and not my mother throwing too much money at coaches to make Cynthia the high queen of teenage swimmers, or my father fucking a blonde younger than mom.  
 

Cynthia was still blissfully ignorant, so they both fussed over her – shopping trips, concerts, movie trips. Trying to win her over to their side, their campaign. I was left to suffer in the stilted world of parental not-quite-silent treatment; ordered around, rather than asked, barely looked in the eye, only spoken to when entirely necessary.  
 

It was… it was hard.  
 

Fall came, bringing more rain than snow, and left me flashing to my own death multiple times a day, until I gave up leaving the house unless I was forced to. One of my aunts finally intervened in my parents’ Cold War against each other, and Mom and Dad went to counselling, and started talking to each other in creepy, new-age phrases that probably only sounded good on cheap get-well-soon cards.  
 

No one did anything about the Cold War against _me.  
_  

I knew we were headed for disaster when I noticed the new routine; it was unnerving, fake, and unsustainable.  
 

Dad would bring flowers home for Mom every Friday night, and Mom would make a roast dinner. A proper, sitcom-era family meal. Dad would kiss Mom on the cheek when she served, and then he’d carve the meat. We’d talk about our days, and chat about potential holidays, and say absolutely nothing to each other. I often wondered what would happen if I had put down my fork and told them the truth.  
 

 _“I took the garbage out last night and stood in the rain for nearly ten minutes, thinking I was being buried in the woods somewhere, dying slowly. I could taste the dirt, and the mould in my mouth, I could smell blood, and I was so cold. I couldn’t even scream.”  
_

Or, _“Mom, the only thing I did wrong was sass you when you asked me if I knew Daddy was having an affair. You never believed my visions before, why would you believe them if I came to you and told you Daddy was fucking some blonde? Dad, you gave yourself away with a lipstick stain. None of this is my fault. You were the one cheating on Mom.”  
_  

I never did. I ate my food, voiced my enthusiasm for a holiday in France, and kept my head down.  
 

The night Mom burnt dinner, it all went to hell.  
 

Dad was home late, angry as a bear about something that had happened at work; I had fled the second he stormed through the door. Cynthia was pouting about something; I don’t remember what. Mom was on the phone to her sister the whole time, trying to cook at the same time and failing miserably.  
 

When we all sat down, Mom slammed the pan on the table to reveal the ruined bird – blackened charcoal on the top, pink and oozing on the bottom. The heat of the pan left a scorch mark on the dining room table too; black, ugly and permanent, no matter how hard I scrubbed at the wood.  
 

Dad looked at it and sneered, before he stood up and left the room. Mom just sank into her chair, with her head in her hands. Cynthia and I simply looked at each other, and began to clear the table, dinner sliding into the garbage with an inelegant ‘plop’. We made sandwiches, and hid in her room, watching TV.  
 

Neither of us slept that night, listening to the screaming arguments from my father’s study, muffled enough that we couldn’t quite make out what was being said, but enough to keep us awake.  
 

I had to tell Cynthia then. About Dad, the blonde, and the lipstick.  
 

I don’t think she ever forgave me.

 

* * *

 

On Monday at school, my nerves were already shot from a very long weekend trying to avoid crossing the battlelines at home. It was full-on warfare, now the counsellor-induced spell was broken. Dad had made dinner Saturday night, pork chops with all the trimmings, and placed the food on the table with a smug smirk.  
 

“Perfectly cooked - not that difficult when you pay attention.”  
 

Mom had glared at him, before seeing me, and a beatific smile graced her lips.  
 

“You know Mary-Alice _despises_ pork.”  
 

My father glared at me during the entire meal, and I had silently eaten vegetables as my mother simpered at me and promised to make me something delicious the next night.  
 

Endless sniping, insults, muttered commentary – it had ruined the weekend, leaving Cynthia and I to lock ourselves in our respective bedrooms and do homework. But being alone only encouraged them to yell, so it wasn’t much of a haven.  
 

For Cynthia, it had been one terrible weekend. For me, it had been months and months of uncomfortable silences, glares, and resentment. Of seeing both my parents turn away from me because I was an easy scapegoat, a disappointment, a _freak.  
_  

I stood at my locker, pulling out books when my friend Bree came up to me.  
 

“Hey, Mary.”  
 

I turned, pasting a smile on my face, and gazed at her for only a second before I began to scream.   
 

At the perfect dime-sized hole in her head, at the blood that was seeping through her dress, from her skin, dripping silently from her hair. The dark bullet holes that dotted the chest of my homeroom teacher, who immediately came to my rescue.  
 

The single hole through my little sister’s throat, as she ran to my side, looking terrified.  
 

Of blood-splattered students, the slick floors, the hell that I had descended into.  
 

When I turned around, to run as fast as I could, I saw him. Riley. I could see the gun in his hands, and then I couldn’t, the image flickering in and out as he stared at me, just like everyone else.   
 

_“Riley has a gun.”_

   
Four words that changed fate and saved my sister, my teacher, and my friend.

   
Four words that I couldn’t explain, just that I knew Riley had a gun and was planning on hurting a lot of people.

   
Four words that had my father drive me to Oregon the next day, to the best and furthest hospital my parents could find, because I was ‘sick’.  


Four words that meant Riley got suspended, and then shot himself in the head a week later.  
 

Four words that changed my life.

 

 


	2. During

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wondered if I'd live long enough to have a boy offer to carry my books for me.
> 
> I doubted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just recently noticed that I never finished uploading MM to AO3, and was horribly embarrassed. So thank you to all the readers who read the first chapter, I'll upload the finish 3 over the next few days. 
> 
> The canon timeline has been fudged a little in this. Jasper and Rosalie are posing as twins and they, with Emmett, are seniors. Alice is a senior. Edward and Bella are juniors who have high enough grades to be in a few senior classes. Bella obviously moved to Forks roughly a year earlier in this story, and the incident with James occurred over the summer, for her to still have a cast in the fall.
> 
> Alice is super depressed. Seriously, if you have ever had thoughts like Alice has here, please confide in a trusted person or medical professional.

  
I used to think I should feel guilty that Riley shot himself, but every time I thought about Bree and Cynthia and Ms Hawkins, and all that blood, I can't. I would trade a dozen lives for the people I care about, let alone one that was determined to make people suffer and hurt and pay a debt that wasn't theirs.

He pulled the trigger. I was just relieved it wasn't directed at anyone else.

* * *

 

The hospital in Oregon was a different world. It was a terrible place, one that would haunt me forever. But by the time I left, my memories were faded and dull; enough that I could push aside some of them. But I would never be the same.

My father barely spoke during the drive to Oregon. I cried most of the way, all three days. Neither of my parents seemed to care what I was trying to tell them; they were convinced that I was sick, diseased, defective. And much worse than that, in their eyes, was that I had exposed that flaw to the world.

By the time I had been bundled in the car, to travel across seven states, I knew my fate was sealed. But the fact that it was intended as punishment rather than aid, that hurt deeply. The fact my parents offered me no comfort from my terror, no kind words… that haunted me.

My father was… succinct when we arrived at the hospital. With a suitcase and a backpack of my things, my father handed over my paperwork, and he left.

Those early days were terrible. Terrifying and traumatic and miserable. A blur of medical staff, suspicious and angry kids, and an overwhelming sensation that I wasn't safe.

Compared to the other kids in the hospital, I was mostly invisible. I didn't scream much (only when I walked in on a suicide-attempt with a sharpened plastic spoon that was a visual definition for 'hack job'), I cried quietly when I was in bed, and I was polite. I wasn't violent, and I did what I was told. I was mostly honest to my doctors, and I didn't complain.

The doctors were dismissive of me, rarely bothering to ask me any questions before making a diagnosis, often prompting me into giving them the response they wanted, that was easiest. I wished I'd read through my paperwork in the car, just to know exactly what my father had said that made everyone think they knew what was wrong with me.

Mostly, they prescribed pills. Lots and lots of pills. They were awful, and made me numb and sleepy, like my brain was wrapped in cotton wool. I took them anyway, without complaint. If I was stuck here, at least the pills made it less terrifying.

I was glad I took them the day Mom, Dad, and Cynthia came out to visit. They didn't tell me they were coming; I wasn't told until after breakfast that morning.

Mom brought me some new underwear, Cynthia brought me a magazine, and Dad brought the news that he and Mom were getting divorced.

Everything was so fuzzy, I couldn't remember how to care. I just thought of burnt dinners, silent, angry trips to Oregon, yelling, and being buried in wet dirt. I said 'okay' a lot, and Dad gave me some quarters for a vending machine that only took dollars and, after they left, I went back to bed.

Then there were the new pills, ones that made me vomit no matter what I ate. And the ones that made me delirious, and I'd beg for someone to just get it over with and bury me in the forest. Then the ones that made everything taste like metal or ash, and the ones that gave me seizures that left me aching and sick.

I remember laughing when one of the doctors mentioned shock treatments, because no one did those anymore. It was inhumane, something reserved for horror movies and history books. Until my father faxed back the paperwork with his signature, and the hospital social worker agreed, and no one was listening to me because I wasn't even fifteen yet.

It wasn't supposed to hurt, and everyone told me I imagined it, since I was asleep the entire time. But the pain in my head was there, a burning, boiling pressure cooker of pain that the nurses claimed I was making up for pain medication. A pain that wouldn't go away, that I learnt to live with.

The doctors considered my treatment a success, since the bubble of pain kept my visions away.

And I gave in. I stopped telling them about my pain. I don't know why. Maybe it was the messages from my family. Mom and Cynthia had bought a new place in Biloxi; the family house had been sold as soon as the divorce was finalised. Our dog, Puff, was staying with Cynthia. Dad had married the blonde, and was moving up north, so she could be closer to her family.

I wouldn't get a choice in the matter: when I got out, I'd be finishing high school wherever Dad was.

Shock treatments, my dog, where I lived – no one was giving me any choices, so I stopped pretending I had any. I stopped pretending I cared.

Because up north?

There are a lot of damp forests for someone to bury a body.

I'd be dead soon enough.

* * *

 

I was released from my Oregon prison in the fall I was seventeen, because terrible things always happen to me during the fall.

I had been locked away from real life for almost four years. I had a phonebook-sized file with letters from my doctors, claiming my treatment and drug cocktail was a success. I was two dress-sizes smaller than I had been when I arrived, and I was so very, very tired. I felt like I was made of hand-spun glass – visibly flawed, and very brittle around the seams.

My new step-mother's name was Calista, and she was in her thirties, which surprised me. I had expected her to be younger. I met her for the first time in the meeting room at the hospital, with my doctors and my father watching on. She was polite, but with an edge that made me aware of exactly how much she didn't want a teenager haunting the house – especially one from my father's first marriage.

But I passed that first meeting, going through the motions of a polite teenage girl. Enough that the head doctor signed my release with a flourish, and patted me on the head patronizingly as he left. And then I was free – free to pick up my backpack and suitcase, to follow my father to his brand new SUV, to leave the hospital into the care of my father, whose attention was fixed to Calistra or to his phone the entire time, as if I was nothing but a package to be picked up.

She chatted a lot during the drive to Washington state, and kept her hand on my father's thigh the entire trip; disguising her warnings as 'jokes' throughout the journey, and telling me about celebrations and events I hadn't been invited to.

I didn't say much as we drove. My head ached, and my thin hospital clothes didn't do a particularly good job at protecting me from the icy air-conditioning. Every time I attempted to doze off, Calista would ask me another inane question about the hospital, and then turned away when I tried to gather my wits enough to answer her.

We stopped once, for lunch at a restaurant Calista chose. It was plush and expensive, and as soon as we sat down, Calista pretended I was invisible; my father ordered for me without consultation. The food sat heavily in my stomach, too rich for me after years of bland hospital fare. The clink of the glasses, the scrape of the cutlery, the low hum of conversation; the entire ordeal felt like a particularly specific, yet somehow vague, dream.

The rest of the journey was filled with my father and Calista's chatter – they'd built a house in a tiny town outside of Seattle called Forks, Washington. A rainy, dismal little place that looked like a perfect setting for a horror film, or some depressing art-house work. Nothing but rain and forest.

A good place for a shallow grave that wouldn't be found.

I did not want to be buried in this horrible little town. Couldn't my would-be murderer have picked somewhere interesting? Italy, perhaps? Around about seventy years from now?

But I didn't have a choice. I've never had a choice. My entire life, I had always been a witness, never a player, and I didn't expect that to change now.

* * *

 

 

Dad and Calista's house looked ridiculous – like boxes of concrete and glass stacked haphazardly on top of one another, with an actual fishpond, and slabs of tree trunk as a staircase. Despite looking huge on the outside, it was small, and awkwardly arranged on the inside. Compared to all the other houses I saw in the street, it stood out as garish and over-the-top. But it was, apparently, Calista's dream home, a design they'd created together after the wedding, and I could tell that the only acceptable response was to admire it.

Calista helpfully showed me around, repeatedly reminding me of 'kid-free spaces' – everywhere except my bedroom and the kitchen, apparently. My room overlooked the street, a white box that was about as cosy as a hotel room, decorated in grey and beige. The whole house felt cold and impersonal, like a set for a magazine shoot. It was as if nobody actually lived here, that it was just the set for a show. Even the framed photographs from the wedding I hadn't been invited to looked generic and forgettable.

Most of the photographs I found were of Calista's family. Only two of Dad – one with his parents, when he graduated from college, the other with Cynthia that was obviously recent; Cynthia was taller, and had lost the childish softness around her face.

Her smile looked a little hollow.

My first thought was that I hadn't seen her since I was told about the divorce.

My second was that even in my dad's house, with a new mother, Cynthia was still the only one with her photograph on the wall.

This wasn't what I pictured when I was told I was finally going home, finally escaping the hospital. Living with a strange woman, in a house devoid of warmth, in a miserable, rainy little town. Alone. No friends or allies, or even my dog.

When had the hospital become the warmer, safer option? My fingers traced the place the ECT electrodes had been fixed; on the left side, a faint scar the only evidence of what had been done to me.

When had I become so… alone?

I returned to my new bedroom to unpack my things.

* * *

 

Those first few days in Forks, before I started school, were… educational. Yes, definitely educational.

I learned that other than dinner my very first night home, I was expected to prepare my meals myself, even when Calista and Dad cooked dinner for each other. Their leftovers were not for me to help myself to. There was a gas station-mini mart I could visit to pick up anything I needed; Calista preferred to have the groceries she and Dad would be consuming delivered from some boutique – and expensive - grocer in Port Angles.

I had to enrol myself in school, register at the local hospital to see my new doctors, call Biloxi Junior High to have my records sent through, even get myself transferred to my father's health insurance, since the one I was currently on was now Mom's. It was a shock, going from the highly-supervised, restricted environment of the hospital to semi-independence, stammering through awkward phone calls, trying to answer questions I never even thought of before.

I called Mom a few times, to see how she and Cynthia were and maybe get some kind of reassurance, but my efforts only resulted in voice mail, and text messages saying, 'doing great, talk soon xoxo', until I gave up. I stalked Cynthia's social media for recent photographs of Puff that I printed and stuck over my desk, until Calista saw them and threw a fit that I was defacing her house.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped being a daughter and a sister, and had become a lodger. A transient. Unwanted baggage.

I guess the universe was trying to protect them from the pain when I finally did vanish.

That's what I told myself at least.

* * *

 

My first day of school was completely mundane - for a crazy person. Some feeble sunshine peered through the clouds for about an hour, and both Dad and Calista had left early, for their jobs in Port Angeles. It was almost luxurious, to be completely alone in the house. Enough that I was sorely tempted to go back to bed and just wallow in the privacy. But the school would contact my father, and though he hadn't said anything to me, I felt like one slip-up, one thing that displeased him, and he would wash his hands of me.

I didn't even know what that would mean.

The school was newer than the hospital, and looked like my school back in Biloxi, just smaller. People stared at me as I arrived, and I pretended not to see them as I headed to the admin building.

Unfortunately, my history worked against me, and I ended up meeting with the vice-principal, who reminded me that they were already weeks into semester, and that I shouldn't expect any college to accept me with my history; and they had a zero-tolerance policy. For what, I don't know.

Then I was forced into a meeting with the counsellor, who offered me a soda, and earnestly told me that 'nothing was impossible, the sky is the limit!' - if I had a good support network. I tried not to laugh, thanked her, and headed into the halls.

Eighteen missed calls and twelve voice mails on my mother's phone.

Six of each on my sister's phone.

My father's signature on a consent form, petty revenge for misplaced blame.

A beloved dog I would never see again.

A stepmother who'd left me a note this morning, reminding me that if I wanted to eat bagels, I should buy my own and not eat hers.

There were houses of cards with better structural integrity than my support network. At this point, I was just hoping my new shrink wouldn't try to cop a feel when I met him.

Dream big, Alice.

* * *

 

I saw him that first day in my English class. He saw me, too, and glared at me. I just stared back.

He was tall, even for a senior, with blonde hair that was just a little longer than fashionable, a scowl that put boy-bands to shame, and eyes the same colour my mother had painted the dining room when I was little, a muddy gold.

I sat at the desk beside him, smiled robotically when my name was called and the teacher introduced me, and proceeded to doodle in my notebook the entire time, trying to resist the urge to look over at him.

He was just one of those people you wanted to look at and really see. When the light hit him right, there was some kind of scar on his neck. He was wearing jeans, a button-up, and motorcycle boots – which definitely would have intrigued me if my medication hadn't killed off half my sex-drive, and my ever-present depression hadn't neutered the other half.

A scowling boy on a motorcycle. I almost wished Cynthia was here, so we could giggle together over him, so Cynthia could poke me in the ribs, and tease me, and I could tease her back, and we would both swear to learn how to ride a motorcycle so we were halfway there, and because boys shouldn't have all the fun.

I really missed my sister.

I expected him to flee the room as soon as the bell rung, but instead he lingered, waiting to assist a girl in the back row with her bag as she manoeuvred crutches and a broken leg down the aisle.

Cramming my books into my bag, I wondered if I'd live long enough to have a boy offer to carry my books for me.

I doubted it.

* * *

My shrink was younger than I anticipated.

He wasn't who I was initially referred to. My intended doctor had tragically kicked the bucket two weeks before I arrived, and Dr C. Cullen was standing in for him. Shockingly enough, not many psychiatrists wanted to move to a place like Forks. Dr Cullen wasn't even technically a mental health professional – he was a surgeon who had enough of a background in psychology that he agreed to take me on.

The hospital had informed my father and the hospital in Oregon, but no one had bothered to tell me, not until I showed up for my appointment and the admin assistant clued me in.

Dr Cullen was young enough to qualify as 'dashing', though he was pale in a sickly way I recognized. I doubted, as a doctor, he got to see the outdoors very often. And the sun even less, since Forks wasn't exactly known for its good weather. A pair of glasses glinted on his face, and he smiled graciously when I arrived, even offering me a bottle of water as I sunk into a chair.

The office was neat, with a bookcase of important-looking textbooks, a few ornaments, and several framed photographs – probably of his family. Nothing that really told me much about him – no awards, or walls full of academic achievements that usually marked a doctor's office.

"How have you been feeling about today's appointment, Mary?" he asked finally. I turned back to look at him, shrugging as I pulled my skirt over my knees.

"Hoping that you wouldn't try to feel me up," I said flatly, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Is that something you've experienced before with your medical care providers?" he asked, looking very concerned. It seemed almost genuine, too.

For a split-second, I wanted to tell him everything; about the old-school doctors, old men who think a pat on the ass, a 'reassuring' hand on the thigh, or an arm around the shoulders was still appropriate. That even the very best of my Oregon doctors had looked; the nurses might brush up against you, and all bets were off with the orderlies, especially once the pills kicked in. I had been lucky that I was the victim of no more than some inappropriate fondling, but I'd been in Oregon for two years and had learnt that sleeping in a tightly-coiled ball was the only safe way to sleep.

And that no one ever believed the patients.

I shook my head. "It was a joke."

We both knew it wasn't.

* * *

 

September turned into October. I didn't hear from my mother or sister at all. I studied, and had sessions with Dr Cullen, and just… existed. I saw my math teacher more often than I saw Calista or Dad, who took up having dinner in Port Angeles after work, rather than consider having a family meal. I learned that there were three kinds of take-out in Forks – bad, awful, and poisonous. I considered getting a part-time job, only to discover the only places that were hiring weren't interested in a girl whose medical history was – apparently - local knowledge.

School was monotonous. Motorcycle boy – whom I'd never actually seen with a motorcycle – appeared to have his own circle of sour-looking friends, so I never even bother approaching him. I sat in the corner at lunch, and worked on my homework. I had a sinking feeling that come graduation, I'd be on my own.

If I lived that long, of course.

I kept studying – for college or a job, I didn't care which. The counsellor seemed to think I could wrangle a scholarship, especially with a killer essay, but I was trying to be realistic. I was only trying because I had nothing else to do with my time. Which was inherently depressing, since I was already on the clock here.

I knew I died in Forks.

I knew the smell of the rain and the dirt, the way the light filtered through the trees. I'd known this place since I was young.

My visions tried their best to return, to break through the barrier of my endless medication, but only the most nebulous of things managed to slip through the wall of pain. Those little fragments – Mom dating, Cynthia with her very first boyfriend, Puff being fat and happy – were never worth the hours of burning agony in my head, that sent me hiding from light and sound.

I had pills to lessen my headaches, to numb the pain, but they didn't work. Not well enough, anyway, and I didn't both asking Dr Cullen for something stronger. I don't know much that is written in my medical file, but I know one of the more spiteful nurses would have noted down my persistent 'requests' for pain medication.

More than once, I realised I hadn't spoken a word in twenty-four hours, simply because I had no one to talk to. I thought about talking to myself, but instead I gathered the courage to ask my father if I could adopt a cat from the shelter to keep me company. Pets were meant to be good for recovery.

No one was more surprised than me when he agreed, and even offered to drive me to the animal shelter the next day.

And then Calista was there, condescendingly informing me that she wouldn't have animals in the house. There was no negotiation, no apology. And my father? He just shrugged and returned to his laptop.

For some reason, I was more heartbroken over the loss of this potential cat than I was over how happy my mother and sister were without me.

And I still had no one to talk to.

* * *

 

Halloween was clearly a big deal in Forks. The local businesses hung decorations, the people donned costumes, and in history class we spent a week on the Salem Witch Trials, because the teacher somehow thought the topic was 'festive'.

I learned that if I had been born a hundred years earlier, I'd probably have been burned alive for saving my sister. Despite my father's best attempts, the modern equivalent of shock treatment wasn't as effective at getting rid of me.

Or perhaps it was just a lot slower. My headaches were worse, a lingering, hot pain that was always with me. I often imagined the pain in my head killing me, the red heat finally turning white and becoming a supernova that swallowed me whole.

A week before Halloween, there was a big assembly, where the vice-principal and the counsellor stood up and encouraged us all the 'participate in the festive fun'; there would be a costume contest, and free candy. There was an edge to their suggestion, one that silently warned us that anyone who didn't participate would be noted.

Motorcycle Boy and his friends rolled their eyes and muttered amongst themselves after the announcement, but they were in the minority – most of the students were excited by the idea of the school embracing Halloween.

I thought of the costumes Cynthia and I used to plan, elaborate and wonderful – her crazy Marie-Antoinette, with candy woven into the wig; my Tinkerbell, with the glow-in-the-dark wings. The hours we'd spend in the basement, fabric and glue, wire and clay. The row of Halloween-costume polaroids she used to stick on her wall, next to her bed.

I found some angel's wings for sale at the gas station, which struck me as funny, if depressing. Paired with jeans and a sweater, they lost some of their power, but I am deemed acceptable by the teachers who swept the halls and were really more concerned with the indecent costumes, rather than the uninspired ones. I shed cheap feathers everywhere, but no one noticed amongst the glitter and fuzz that peeled from everyone else's.

Motorcycle Boy wore a cowboy hat and cowboy boots – and perhaps I should have rechristened him the Cowboy, because it was both an endearing and delicious look for him. The rest of his friends were in much more elaborate get-ups. Flappers, gangsters, witches and wizards. Beautifully made costumes that deserved more than a trip through high school.

I sent Cynthia a photo of me posing with a pumpkin-chocolate cupcake from the cafeteria, angling my phone so my costume didn't look quite so pathetic, texting her 'Happy Halloween'.

For some reason, I knew that was it. It would be the last time I reached out for my sister, to try and repair the damage. This would be the photograph that she looked at when they discovered me gone. Half-smiling in a sparkly blue tank top, and grey sweater, in white angel's wings, clutching a bright-orange cupcake. The industrial fluorescent lights did a good job at disguising my pallor, at the dark circles underscoring my eyes despite my concealer's best efforts.

In that picture, I looked foreign to myself, somehow. Like the photo version of me had managed to piece myself back together, imperfectly, but enough to get by. Like the photo version of Alice was going to go home to Biloxi before college, and reunite with her sister, and maybe move forward.

The real-life version of me needed a new tube of concealer, some pain killers, and was going to die in the forest.

I sent it anyway. I didn't expect a reply, and I wasn't surprised when I never got one.

I threw away the disgusting cupcake, and the angel's wings.

A few days later, I checked her social media – the only way I knew how to be with her; a one-sided dialogue. Cynthia always adored social media, documenting and curating everything she did. Her swim meets, her co-curricular, her social life. And our beloved Halloween. She wore two costumes this year. An incredible superhero in pink and silver spandex, with Puff as her cape-bedecked sidekick, posing with Mom, in her constant gold-medallist costume.

And, then at a high school party, as an asylum patient, with a crazy-doctor boyfriend clutching paddles to her head. She was laughing and hamming it up for the camera.

At first, I was confused, not grasping what I was seeing. The fake straight-jacket, her blue eyes painted with the bruise-like circles that I recognized. At the blue tinge of her lips, and her utter joy and laughter, captured for prosperity.

The betrayal bloomed in my heart, that she'd do such a thing. She had to know it would hurt me. She had to know that I could see it.

What had I ever done to her? Why was she punishing me? For telling her why Mom and Dad were fighting? For being shoved into the psychiatric hospital?

What had Mom and Dad convinced her I'd done that was so terrible? What had she convinced herself of?

I spoke out to save her life because I loved her fiercely, my dearest friend. I had been practically begging her to speak with me for weeks, months, since I'd gotten to Forks. Calls, messages, texts, and emails – I had tried them all.

And nothing. Just radio silence.

Apparently, the last word wasn't a word at all. I felt hollowed out and brittle, but a little colder, a little meaner. I thought of the Other Alice in the Halloween photo I had sent her, before I knew about any of this. Other Alice could reunite with her sister, but this me wasn't going to.

I carefully combed her accounts, saving every photo of Puff she had ever posted, right down to the ones of him as a puppy, with both of us cuddling him. The one member of the family who hadn't turned away from me.

And then I deleted my accounts.

* * *

 

It took me two weeks before I gained the courage to delete Cynthia's number from my phone – Mom's too. I thought perhaps I'd instantly regret it – my memory hadn't been the same since the shock therapy; I was missing months of my life, and details like my family's phone numbers had somehow fallen out of my head.

But I didn't. I didn't get any relief, either. I felt exactly the same as I did before, albeit with only five numbers saved to my phone.

Dr Cullen saw me once a week, and I knew he knew that I wasn't saying everything. I focused on things that are essentially irrelevant – how hard it was to make friends at school as a senior; dealing with a new stepmother; moving out of home next year; getting into college.

But it was on my father's dime, and Dr Cullen humoured me, and we talked. I was learning how to fill up time with words that said nothing. He mentioned his own children at the school – adopted, apparently, because he wasn't old enough to have teenagers. Edward and Emmett Cullen; plus his niece and nephew, Jasper and Rosalie. I pretended I've heard of them, but I couldn't identify them at gun-point. I knew about six kids in the senior class, and that was more from faculty intervention than any sort of socialisation.

Before Thanksgiving, he looked very sad, and gave me his home phone number.

"If you need absolutely anything, Mary-Alice, please call me. Any time of day, no matter how small you thing it is. Even if you just want to chat about the weather," he told me earnestly.

I nodded and smiled and thanked him, pushing the paper into the pocket of my jeans where I know I'd forget about it.

We got two extra days off school for Thanksgiving, mostly because the gym had flooded, and the school needed to fix it before we resumed classes. Everybody was looking forward to Thanksgiving, I assume for the same reasons that I was – not having to wade through snow or mud to get to school in the morning, and then do it again to get home; apparently the school bus only added students to their route once a semester, so I had to wait until January before it will bestow upon me the honour of picking me up and dropping me off.

Calista invites her family over for the holiday, and Dad invites his best friend and his wife. I wear a black dress, and spend most of Thanksgiving dinner playing waitress, answering only banal questions about school and fetching drinks to people I don't know who stare at me.

Cynthia calls Dad after everyone has left, and we're cleaning up. The conversation is pleasant – obviously, they aren't estranged. I wash up, and ignore the little pulse of disappointment that neither Cynthia nor Mom ask to speak with me. Then I accidentally chip one of Calista's dishes, and she throws a fit and calls me names, and I resist the urge to smash the plate and tell her to do the washing up herself if she's going to be so damn precious.

The flash of temper is unexpected, and I shove it down, and continue the methodical process of washing up the dishes for twelve people. Before I'm finished, my father has his tablet out, and has ordered a replacement for the assaulted dish, and Calista has never looked more like a spoilt child to me as she does now, still pouting over my accident.

Later, shut in my bedroom while Dad tries to calm Calista down, I idly wonder what Dr Cullen is doing for Thanksgiving. He looked like a nice man - I hope he had a nice wife.

I take a sleeping pill when I realise that this year, I cannot think of a damn thing to be thankful for.

* * *

 

I go back to school in the snow, shivering violently underneath layers of worn-out cotton. I am not used to this biting kind of cold. Though, it isn't entirely the weather's fault – I am thinner than when I was in middle school. The only thing Dr Cullen ever really enforces with me is to get me to put on some weight, which is a losing battle if I have ever heard one. I'm discouraged from serious cooking in Calista's kitchen, and I'm not particularly good at it anyway. My medications steal my appetite, and the cafeteria options rarely inspire any sort of hunger – and even if I were hungry, I wouldn't venture into the cafeteria. I exist on soda, toast, and vending machine snacks - and fistfuls of vitamins that Dr Cullen prescribed for me with worry in his eyes.

Dad and Calista discuss the possibility of a trip to Mexico for Christmas – one that Calista has made abundantly sure I know I am not included in. She threw a tantrum when she suggested I spend Christmas with my mother, and Dad shot her down without pausing.

If I wasn't sure before, I am positive now: I am motherless.

A holiday in Mexico is apparently the perfect balm for being forced to spend the holidays with her husband's eldest daughter.

If they took me to Mexico with them, I'm not sure I wouldn't run away as fast as I can, and stay where there are beaches to lie on, sun to shine down upon me. I can't remember the last time I was warm.

At least then I'd be far away from the forests of Washington.

The paths of Forks High are as slippery as glass thanks to the snow, and falling is inevitable - I hit the pavement hard, my left side aching. My books are damp, and my head perpetually aches, and I have never wanted to be at home more than I do right now.

Some of Motorcycle Boy's friends – Former-Broken-Leg Girl, and a pretty blonde – have gym with me, and are in the change rooms as I peel off my jeans. My fall has left my leg and hip black and blue, my elbow too. Not surprising – I am all bone and skin, no fat or padding to soften the blow. I change quickly, but both of them are staring at me. Former-Broken-Leg Girl looks at me with pity, but the blonde is like stone.

I slip again later, and mentally prepare myself for a matching set of bruises along my right side, but this time, there is someone there – a boy with red hair – to right me.

"No one deserves two falls in one day," he says, watching me intently.

I thank him, and wade through the snow to get home, rather than risk slipping on the ice again.

In the end, Dad and Calista decide to stay home for Christmas, and go to Mexico in the New Year. Suddenly, our house becomes the centre of festivities, with a massive – and professionally decorated – pine tree, with fairy lights and carols on the stereo. Calista starts baking, and the whole house smells like cinnamon and sugar. In her pursuit of perfection, Calista has stolen my favourite holiday tasks, and the holiday feels a little hollow after that.

Out of nowhere, Dad demands I hand over gifts for Mom and Cynthia, to post all the way back to Biloxi, so I beg a ride to Port Angeles with him one day to go shopping. Thankfully, he offers me his credit card, as I have practically no money of my own.

I wander for hours, having to wait until he finishes work before we go home. I pick out a lipstick for Mom, and a sweater for Cynthia – and then, feeling passive aggressive, I throw in a small paperback about the history of asylums in America. I think I scared the bookseller, demanding the most graphic one they had. I buy a new collar for Puff, and an expensive candle for Calista, and a hardback novel for Dad.

And then I buy a small clock for Dr Cullen. Nothing elaborate or particularly expensive – the size of my palm, in copper. Modern and tasteful, for his desk at work.

I wrap my presents in a booth at a diner, sipping coffee and picking at some fries. It is freezing cold, and I wonder if Dad will be pissed if I buy myself some more winter clothes, because nothing I have is doing the job properly. I am practically dreaming of woollen clothes, of snow boots and parkas.

Dad isn't particularly impressed with my gifts for Mom and Cynthia – though I don't specify what the book is about. He's slightly less annoyed when I explain I didn't want to overspend, since it wasn't my money, and there must be some kind of pity left in him for me, because he takes me to dinner at an Italian restaurant. We talk a little – about Christmas, and his vacation, and school. He makes a few inquiries about my sessions with Dr Cullen, but doesn't push when I change the subject.

He watches me eat closely – the hours in the cold air have awakened my appetite, and I slowly consume bread, spaghetti, and cake; I feel more substantial than I have in months.

The gentle hum of the radio, the huff of the heater, lulls me to sleep on the drive home. I am surprised my father lets me – he always thought sleeping in the passenger seat was extremely rude, liked to pat my legs and shoulder to wake me up when I dozed off during road trips, so we could continue to drive in silence together.

Calista is firmly entrenched in holiday preparations when we get home, and I slip upstairs to write on my Christmas cards, and hand over the gifts to be sent to Biloxi.

Mom, Cynthia, Dad and Calista all get the identical missive – my name signed underneath the pre-printed holiday message.

Dr Cullen gets 'Thank you' above my name.

I don't think I have any words left for anyone.

 


	3. After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That is how I celebrate my last birthday. Clean jeans, and a plastic bottle of perfume, with a perfunctory kiss on the top of my head from my father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read, followed and favourited so far! This is the penultimate chapter of this weird little story - the final part will be added Monday, AU-time. And after that, back to Shadow to Light ;) And yes, this is part of a series - more notes on that at the end of the final chapter. 
> 
> The editor is stripping some of the formatting from my work - bolding and italics, mostly. I apologise if this affects your reading, but I cannot work out how to fix it properly.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as lexiewrites or goldeneyedgirl (my twilight-only blog), and I'm happy to chat about all things Twi-fic related.

Jasper Hale. That is the name of Motorcycle-Boy.

I learn it two days before Christmas vacation, when the news filters down to me that Jasper and Rosalie Hale both got into Princeton, early admission.

Blonde girl from gym class turns out to be Rosalie Hale. Both of them look utterly bored with everything, but I suppose the last few months of senior year aren't exactly thrilling when you've already gained acceptance to an Ivy League school.

And I'm still hoping just one college will decide to give me a chance. Not even a scholarship.

I can't remember what my college hopes were before the hospital. I'm not entirely sure if I had something to aspire to, and the shock therapy stole it from me, or if I was just too young to really think about what came after high school. And I don't have the energy to get Dad to call Mom and request she ship my childhood diaries down to Forks so that I can try to fill in the gaps.

The Hale twins are fascinating to watch – pale, but perfectly formed, like statues that have begun to turn human. On the rare times I venture into the cafeteria, I find myself sketching them – Jasper more than Rosalie, because as pretty as she is, there is something about his face. It's not imperfect, but it feels like there is more to see. I feel like I've seen him before. Maybe we went to school together when we were younger, he has a slight Southern lilt to his words. She doesn't, though.

If things were different, and I was different, I think I could very easily fall in love with Jasper Hale. Not just based on the way he looks, but on the little things – the way he always opens doors for girls; the way he waits for Former-Broken-Leg Girl after every class they share, even though I'm certain she's dating the red headed boy who caught me in the snow.

The way he talks with his hands when he is asked a question in class, and explains it slowly, like he's thought about the idea for a long time.

The way he chooses his words carefully.

The small, devious grins he exchanges with the big guy that sits at his lunch table, that clearly accompany an in-joke.

The way he tugs on Rosalie's hair to tease her, and grins at her dark glare.

The fact that even though every single time he catches me watching him, he glares at me fiercely, like he would burn me from existence if he could, at least I know he's seeing me. I know only two people ever bother to acknowledge my presence when I am before them – Dr Cullen, and Jasper Hale. And Dr Cullen, as nice as he is, is paid to acknowledge my existence.

No one is forcing Jasper Hale to notice me.

* * *

 

School finally ends for the holidays, and everyone is going nuts. It is impossible to avoid the snowball fights, the stench of cheap candy-canes, or the slightly manic behaviour of everyone, even the teachers. More flooding means that we are released four days early; everyone else is ecstatic. I have no plans, no social life, nothing to really look forward to. My only holiday plans are to take advantage of the fact that neither of my parents have had their credit cards removed from my e-book account, and read everything I can think of.

Calista uses my free time to enlist me to clean the house, whilst she decorates cakes, and writes invitations. I learn she owns three dozen crisp white linen napkins, and that for certain women, holiday decorating is just another form of warfare.

I am informed that Dad and Calista have planned a cocktail party 'for grownups' on Christmas Eve, and then a family lunch on Christmas Day. She is obliged to allow my presence at Christmas lunch, but makes it abundantly clear I am to be invisible during the cocktail party.

I turn eighteen in February, but I don't both to mention that. I'm also more of a grown up than she is, but I don't mention that either.

After all, I'm not the one that freaked out and cried when the washing machine flooded the laundry room. I just unplugged it, and got a mop.

My last appointment with Dr Cullen for the year is three days before Christmas; I arrive feeling stupid about the present for him in my bag. I really can't think of much to say to him, and he brings me hot chocolate from the vending machine.

Whilst he is gone, I think of all the things I can't say to him.

My stepmother hates me, and I'm certain my father would choose her between the both of us.

I miss my dog.

I wish I was friends with your nephew, and that I looked like your niece.

"Christmas is always a difficult time," he begins when he returns, and I shrug.

"My Christmas present this year doesn't kick in until the 29th," I manage to explain. These words are easy. The hot chocolate is watery and scalding. "Dad and Calista are going to some resort in Mexico for New Year."

Dr Cullen frowns and nods. "You're looking forward to being alone?" he asks carefully.

"I am. It will be peaceful. Calista really doesn't like me," I explain, sipping the drink.

"I never understood how a step-parent could refuse to embrace their step-children," he shook his head. "Friendship is free."

I smiled at him. "Yes, but you've adopted children. You chose to take them in. I sort of got dumped on Calista and Dad." I decide, since it's Christmas, to finally mention the Thanksgiving phone call to him. That Mom and Cynthia have officially discarded me.

Dr Cullen looks heartbroken for me.

"How do you feel about this?" he asks.

I heave a sigh that seems too big for my body. "I felt guilty for a long time. Now, I'm angry. Or scorned. I don't know. I don't think I did anything terrible to them. The boy had a gun, so I saved Cynthia. I didn't tell Mom about the affair because she never believed me before."

I've never brought up my visions, or Riley, to Dr Cullen before, and I am expecting him to pounce on those details, but he doesn't.

"I agree that you have been let down by the people who are supposed to love and support and protect you from harm," Dr Cullen tells me. "But Cynthia, she is younger than you, and is most likely reacting to what your parents have told her about you. She could simply be misled."

"Misled girls don't wear asylum costumes to Halloween parties when their sister was sent to a psychiatric hospital," I tell him flatly. "She's older than I was when my father authorised the doctors to… to electrocute me; she should be able to think for herself. Or at least given me the chance to tell my side of the story."

Dr Cullen just looks at a loss for words, and then he gets a call about an emergency, and apologies as he leaves.

I leave the Christmas present on his desk for him to find later.

* * *

 

The cocktail party goes to plan – better than expected, since I snag some of the food when Calista is in the shower, and spend the night curled up with a movie. I listen to the chatter that floats up the stairs, and I don't really remember what the movie is about.

Christmas morning is exactly what I prepared myself for; Dad and Calista sitting in front of the tree, surrounded by presents, like some kind of generic, uninspired catalogue photo. I tucked myself onto the couch, and ignore Calista's comment about the hoodie that I wear over my pyjamas – my bathrobe is one thing I have finally outgrown.

Dad gifts Calista jewellery, artwork, and designer accessories; Calista gifts Dad an expensive new watch, antique books, and a summer trip to Spain.

I am given gift cards for clothes, a couple of books on college preparation, some toiletries, and a new bedspread – for my college dorm room, apparently.

I watch Dad help Calista with her new necklace, the diamonds winking at me, and wonder if anyone would ever buy me heart-shaped diamonds. Or just something I don't need, will simply just like.

And then I remember that despite the fact the visions don't really come anymore, I'm still going to die in Forks. And that will probably happen before I look at any boy and find him looking back.

Dad lets me open the gift from Mom and Cynthia – a modern, rock crystal chess set that is clearly solely intended for Dad and Calista, since my name isn't even on the card. Dad frowns and looks at me again with something akin to concern– it's a shame I won't be here next year, because I don't think he'd force me into buying them gifts again.

I don't really care. The part of me reserved for familial love has slowly hardened into stone.

And it's not like I paid for their gifts out of my own money, anyway.

I try to look on the bright side, later, after Calista's family have gifted me a third package of crumbling, sickly-sweet bath bombs – if I combine my gift cards, I can get a new winter coat; the shampoo and conditioner Calista gave me are expensive boutique brands I would never buy myself. The books are about studying techniques, which are at least useful. And the bedspread is quite pretty – blue linen, with white buttons.

Plus, I get to gouge myself on holiday food. I sneak into the kitchen whilst everyone is socialising, and pillage the leftovers, making me feel heavy and sick but satisfied.

It isn't until later, Christmas night, that Cynthia and Mom call. I am in the shower when the phone rings, and I don't bother rushing. They hang up before I come back downstairs, ready to help clean up. Calista makes a point of telling me they called to talk only to Dad, not to me.

I'm not sure what she's expecting, but I can tell it's not the shrug of indifference I give her.

What satisfaction does she get from hoping to see me upset?

* * *

 

Dad and Calista leave for Mexico before dawn, and there is a four-page list of rules waiting for me, as I help myself to one of the forbidden bagels. The demands are endless – no parties or drinking or drugs or guests. Make sure to order groceries before they get home. Make sure the laundry is done. Make sure the house is spotless. Don't touch the cars, the central heating, Dad's computer, or any of Calista's things.

I rush through my holiday homework, and spend days luxuriating in reading in front of the fire place; in eating scrambled eggs straight out of the pan, and spending entire days in my flannel pyjamas.

The first few days of the New Year, I drag myself out of my happy cocoon to see Dr Cullen. The combination of holiday eating and being alone means that I've put on weight, and he is delighted with my progress.

I tell him about Christmas, and joke about Dad and Calista smothering each other in expensive gifts, and the collection of bath bombs I've managed to accumulate – the juvenile side of me wants to introduce them to the snow, to see what Dad and Calista say when they come home to find white marred by tie-dye swirls.

I mention Mom and Cynthia's gift to Dad and Calista, and my plans to go to Port Angeles to buy myself a winter coat; Dr Cullen glances at my worn out parka, designed for the wet rather than the cold, and at least five years old.

"Do you know what I find really strange?" I said finally, as I stood up to leave.

"What's that?" Dr Cullen looks at me almost fondly; I have to keep reminding myself that Dad is pretty much paying off his mortgage, and I'm just another patient to him. That this is a business arrangement, and any quasi-friendly feelings I have for him are just evidence that I am deprived of positive human interaction.

I'd probably break down if someone hugged me.

"That after everything that happened, Mom and Cynthia still talk to Dad. Cynthia calls at least once a week, and Mom speaks to him on major holidays." I shrug my parka back on, and begin snapping it closed. "Even after he had an affair, and then married the other woman. They forgave him. My mom and sister haven't spoken to me since before the divorce was finalised."

"I don't know what to say to that, Mary-Alice," Dr Cullen replies. He looks tired, probably sick of listening to my endless problems.

I shrug. "Just an observation, nothing else. I still miss my dog, though."

As I leave, I spy the little clock I bought him, perched on his desk – my Christmas card pinned to the board on the wall. For some reason, that makes me feel a little better.

* * *

My father and Calista came back from their vacation tanned and laughing, and for the first time I am struck with the possibility they might consider having a child together. The idea of another sibling, of an infant in this house, is not one that I want to linger on.

I am stuck listening to endless stories about how amazing Mexico was – the sun, the sand, the food they ate. I peel my last orange, and listen politely. I look at their photos and admire their souvenirs, and eventually life goes back to normal.

School, doctor's, home, repeat. Forks is so dead and brown in the winter, nothing is comforting. The thought that this time next year, I'll be done with high school hovers above me, like a cloud. The question of what comes next is the one thing I try not to think about.

Will I be in college somewhere, living in a dorm?

Will I be back in another hospital, being pumped full of pills and electricity?

Or will I be dead and buried in the expansive forests of the Olympic Peninsula?

Dr Cullen and I talk about nothing in particular. He tries to steer the conversation to my plans after graduation, but I don't have any. I am clinging to my life here with the tips of my fingers, and the idea that once I have graduated high school as an eighteen-year-old, that the only obligation my father has towards me is that of pity makes me feel sick.

In a perfect world, I would have parents who would protect me, let me take a year off to work before going away to college. To let me pull myself together, get myself off the medication, and decide what I want for myself.

Of course, in a truly perfect world, I wouldn't need any of this because I never would have been broken into so many pieces in the first place.

* * *

Valentine's Day dawns with watery light. The snow is slushy and grey, and I would have forgotten about the holiday if it weren't for two things. One, the beach-ball sized arrangement of red roses my father gifts to Calista, along with a lacquered box of candy.

And two, the explosions of love-themed decorations at Forks High. Paper heart garlands criss-cross the hallways in pink and red. More than one classroom door boasted crepe-paper hearts and roses, and when I finally ventured into the cafeteria, all the food was dyed fluorescent shades of pink and red.

I float through the day, ignoring the adoring couples, the sickly sweetness; squealing girls finding glittery cards tucked into their bags or lockers, boys with lip-gloss stains on their cheeks and collars. I feel immune to this celebration of love and affection, as if I am observing this from behind a pane of glass, taking notes on human behaviour.

The red-headed boy that hangs out with Jasper Hale corners the girl who had a broken leg, with a single sunflower and some kind of gift. It looks like a book. She looks happy and awkward, but I don't linger.

I am trapped in the cafeteria during lunch, watching the vice-principal present red roses to girls from 'secret' admirers. The girls blush and giggle, but with an edge – there is a definite competition over who ends up with the most flowers. I watch Rosalie Hale get more than a few, though her enormous boyfriend seems more amused than jealous. I watch the girl who had a broken leg accept a few with a bright blush, that makes the red-headed boy look annoyed – as well as several of her female classmates.

It's actually frustrating, how pointless today feels to me. I am tired of giddy schoolgirls, tired of classes where the teachers don't even attempt to teach, of drifting through the hours. I am so grateful when school gets out, that I don't even care I have to walk home through the snow.

But home isn't any better. The roses perfume the entire house, and I am banished to my room as soon as Dad and Calista get home, because they want a 'romantic dinner'. I lie awake until late, with my headphones in, just watching the clouds pass over the sky through my window. For some reason, the heart-shaped pancakes and candy of my childhood Valentine's Days float across my mind; the matching pink and red party dresses Mom would dress Cynthia and I in for the family dinner. Writing endless Valentine's Day cards for our classmates with Cynthia, but saving the best card with the most glitter just for her.

I remember looking forward to Valentine's Day, giddy at the idea that one day I'd be grown up enough to be given flowers and candy, to go to a Valentine's Day dance, to be loved like that. I remember pouring over catalogues with Cynthia, picking out the dresses we'd wear on these imaginary dates. Hers were always ruffled beyond comprehension, mine were always sequined.

Not for a second did I ever think those innocent pancake breakfasts and family dinners would leave me, without a better replacement. Family love is supposed to always be there for you. Friends are supposed to always be there for you.

When I get up for breakfast, Calista has already finished her chocolates, and the flowers have been broken down into smaller bouquets around the house; a new piece of something gold and shiny hangs from her wrist.

I comfort myself with the fact that gas station will have discounted candy today; no sense letting it go to waste.

* * *

 

I turn eighteen on a Tuesday.

After their vacation, Dad and Calista seem busier than ever, clocking in long hours at work, and not coming home until after I've gone to bed. The extent of our communication were the prim notes left on the kitchen bench, reminding me to pick up milk, do the laundry, or take out the recycling. By the time my birthday arrived, I wasn't expecting much. Or anything. Maybe a lift to school? Or breakfast? Eighteen was a big deal, surely a celebratory bagel wasn't too much to ask.

Back home, before the hospital, I know what my eighteenth birthday would have looked like – the same as every other eighteenth birthday party in the extended family, in our social circle. A huge birthday party, a pile of presents, and my family celebrating with me. The same thing I would have had for my sweet sixteen or my twenty-first.

Instead, I wake up to rain. Rain and an empty house, Dad and Calista already left for work. There are no notes waiting, no indication this is anything more than an ordinary Tuesday.

I treat it like a normal Tuesday. A piece of toast, black coffee that burns its path to my stomach, and school. Today is only different in that I have made sure my favourite clothes are clean.

I didn't see Dad or Calista until that night, when they came in carrying take-out. Dad brings me the gift of a book, and a small bottle of drug-store perfume. Calista has picked up some cupcakes with chalky icing.

That is how I celebrate my last birthday. Clean jeans, egg rolls, and a plastic bottle of perfume, with a perfunctory kiss on the top of my head from my father.

Happy birthday, Mary-Alice.

* * *

 

"Excuse me."

Those are the first words Jasper Hale ever says to me, not even looking at me as he moves past. The halls are crowded – apparently administration has given up fixing the flooding as it happens, and simply closed off two buildings entirely, and the halls are bursting with students.

I am resting against my locker, reading my birthday book (a positively riveting tome about staying organized in college), and waiting for the bell to ring.

He moves close enough to me that I can smell him – the leather of his jacket, the damp, something that is distinctively 'boy', and a slight sweetness. I pretend to keep reading, but watch him leave. He has such a stern expression, especially for a teenager. He carries himself differently, as well. He moves like he knows self-defence or something. I have no doubt that he could go from walking to flat-out sprinting in a split-second.

The red-headed boy is staring at me and I look away, in case he gets the wrong idea. But the red-head watches me carefully, and making me uncomfortable, so I do my best to get back into my book, my hair falling over my face.

Colour-coding notes, whiteboard calendars, and the benefits of post-its. God, I turned eighteen – the least Dad could have done was buy me one of those dirty paperbacks from the gas station.

The bell finally rings, and I let myself get carried along by the surge of students, not even looking over at Redheaded-Creeper, and wondering how the hell I'm meant to fill in so much time.

When the only company you have is your own thoughts, you run out of things to think about after a while.

* * *

 

The library is one of the closed-off buildings, though the librarian reassures me that it's preventative, and it will reopen in a few days. But it means my only option for the lunch period, since I'm not a member of any clubs, is the cafeteria.

With rain pouring down outside, the cafeteria is full beyond measure, and after a minute of pushing and shoving, I give up on getting in the lunch line, and just get my usual vending machine fare, and take the empty table in the very back corner.

For the first time in a while, I draw. It's nothing until it becomes something, just leaves overlapping and filling the page. The tiny curlicues of vine. The writhing mass of dirt.

My head hurts, my soda is lukewarm, and I just want to put my head down on the table and either sleep, or cry. I'm not sure which. But the bell rings, and I only have two classes left this afternoon, so there's no point making a fuss. I have an appointment with Dr Cullen coming up, maybe he can offer some advice.

As I dump my soda, I see Jasper Hale and his friends watching me. I stare back at them.

There's an empty seat at their table, and they've never invited me to join them – or really ever spoken to me - so I cannot imagine their sudden interest is anything particularly kind.

My fingers unconsciously slip up to trace the ECT scar on my temple, tracing the rough skin rapidly, as if I can rub it away. The scar, the flesh, the bone, the bubble of pain, all gone through that repetitive motion.

I imagine being up to my wrists in my own blood and tissue, breaking myself apart to find the source of my headaches. Redheaded Boy jerks away from my gaze suddenly, and I wonder if my depraved thoughts are flashing above my head. I finally turn and head towards my next class.

It's a good idea for a drawing, though.

* * *

 

I get home to find Calista already there – with a gaggle of her friends; they all look so similar. Slim, shiny hair, tailored clothes, fine gold jewellery. They are all clutching glasses of wine, sitting on the couches, laughing.

"Mary-Alice!" Calista bounds up to me, a cloud of sharp perfume. "Guys, this is my gorgeous step-daughter, Mary-Alice! She's a senior this year."

I look at their faces, the same sorority smile, coos of greeting, and I know the picture Calista is painting for them – the adoring step-mother versus the sullen, resentful teenage girl. Calista is the victim here, the rejected. I am the problem child.

Looking up at her, her arm tight around my shoulders, I want to avenge myself. I want to prove that I am not this hideous black hole; that in this tableau of 'family', it is Calista who shut me out, turned away from me before we ever even met.

I manage a smile for them, ask polite questions, and answer theirs in a sickly sweet manner that has Calista looking pinched, chewing on her lip. I refill their glasses, before I excuse myself to do my homework.

I am only halfway up the stairs, though out of sight, when I hear someone say something about me, and Calista scoff. The word 'nightmare' finds me on the stairs, and any sort of righteous indignation slips from me. I am so fucking tired of the games my father and his spiteful wife play with me.

My homework is discarded for a shower, and clean pyjamas. The ECT scar stands out on my skin, red and agitated – I need to stop touching it. I curl up with my e-reader, sinking into the softness of my bed, even though the sun hasn't quite set yet.

After dark, one of Calista's friends knocks on my bedroom door; she's brought me a slice of their pizza and a soda, which is probably the kindest thing anyone has done for me in years. She smiles at me, and wishes me luck for college.

I eat the pizza too fast, the cheese burning my mouth, but it is the best thing I have eaten in days. It warms me right up, gives me enough energy to tackle my homework. I listen to Calista and her tipsy friends laugh and chatter downstairs, I hear my father arrive home. He doesn't come to check in on me, and I don't expect him to.

I feel agitated, like I am waiting for something, and I don't know what. Even after Calista's friends leave, and she and Dad retire to bed, I cannot still myself. I pace, I read, I organize.

When I finally crawl into bed, the dream that wraps around me is the old faithful of my death. It's eluded me for a while, and now it is back again.

But it is worse tonight, as I sink into the mud and dirt, let vines and roots tangle around my limbs and through my hair and hold me in place. Dirt and mud covers me, like a heavy woollen blanket, weighing me down.

And every breath I take, the earth takes with me.

I wake up, eighteen years and two days old, with the taste of dirt on the back of my tongue, gasping for as much oxygen as I can. I am free of the dirt and the forest, and back in my own bed, but I cannot summon the energy to be afraid, not anymore.

* * *

 

Jasper Hale finds me in the art rooms the next morning, my right boot on the table as I wait for the hot glue gun to heat up. If I get caught, I'll be in trouble, but my socks are soaking wet and my feet are frozen cold. A little glue, and I can fix the sole long enough to get home, and either find a new pair on eBay or summon the energy to ask my father for a new pair.

"What are you doing?" he asks me from the doorway.

I don't look at him, just test the temperature of the glue again. "Home shoe repair." And after that, I plan to skip homeroom to dry my socks in the girls change rooms. It's a glamorous life, that's for sure.

He is at my side before I even know he's moved, making me jump. He picks up my boot, his lips quirking with amusement, as he inspects the damage of the sole.

"Come with me," he says, handing me back the shoe. "Glue won't hold it."

I slip my foot back into the offending footwear, and follow him out of the art room, and into woodwork/metal shop.

He motions for me to hand him back the boot. It looks ridiculous in his hand, like a child's shoe. He flips it over, inspects the sole, and within a few minutes, has some kind of pins or something, and a hammer. It takes him no time at all hammer the pins in.

"Is the other one okay?" he asks, and I nod, slightly stunned, as I take my newly-repaired boot from him.

He nods once, and leaves just as suddenly as he appeared.

And I am left wondering exactly what just happened.

* * *

Life rambles on, dragging me with it. The snow gives way to slush, with the familiar green of Forks peeking through. My appointments with Dr Cullen are scheduled less often. My sister wins some kind of award, and my father flies to Mississippi to see her accept it. Calista goes to Seattle for a 'girls' weekend' with her friends, rather than be alone with me.

The death dream throws a shadow over me at every possible moment; I scratch my arms raw, trying to scrape away the dirt that isn't there. I try not to sleep, to avoid waking up tasting dirt and shaking in terror.

The boot Jasper Hale repaired for me holds strong, and I am grateful I don't have to try and replace them.

At school, teachers are reluctant to call on me, as I jump every time someone addresses me. I spend so long in my silent, solitary little bubble that my name, any attention, it feels like a thunderclap.

I see Jasper Hale sometimes, trailing after his friends who are so neatly paired off. When I see him, I wish things were different. I wish I was happier, braver, that maybe I could slip my hand into his, and he'd be happy to see me.

There is talk about prom; dresses and dates, dinner and dancing. I am as immune to it as the freshmen. I might sketch the idea of a dress in my notebook during class, of lace skirts and intricate beading, but I am not delusional.

My prom in Mississippi would have been a production; custom-made dresses, limousines and five-star dinners. It would have fallen short only of my debutante ball, or of my wedding.

I barely acknowledge my father or my step-mother, mostly because I barely see them. My father and Calista see my silence, my monosyllabic answers, as something else – teenage rebellion, something just short of rudeness. That 'yes' and 'no' are placeholders for screaming demands and nastiness. I can't deny that they are so very disappointing to me, that they are pointless figureheads in my life.

I am so close to breaking down that every time I speak, I worry I'm going to cry or scream and never stop, and then Dad will send me all the way back to Oregon.

I learn not to look them in the eye, to hide behind a book, or my hair. Rude is better than crazy.

Rude gets you kicked out; crazy gets you locked up and electrocuted.

* * *

 

By the time my ending is upon me, spring has settled into Forks.

The ground is soft and yielding, the landscape is its usual rich green.

Classmates used to the climate shuck off their parkas and boots for jeans and jackets, but I huddle into my winter clothes; I can't even remember what it feels like to feel warm.

Dad and Calista are home less and less.

I stop making appointments with Dr Cullen.

I think I'm out of words.


	4. End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today is here, monsters are real, and I am dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the very end. I don't think this is going to end how many people expected it to, but… yes.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who took the time to follow, favourite, read, and review. Now that this is finished, we can return to our regularly schedule Shadow to Light.
> 
> Please read the notes at the very end, because there are two possibilities for a potential continuation of this universe, and I'd would very much like to know which one you would prefer to read about!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as lexiewrites or goldeneyedgirl (my twilight-only blog), and I'm happy to chat about all things Twi-fic related.

  
My last conversation with Calista and Dad isn't meaningful, or even pleasant. It was over breakfast, the meal we most often share – I was trying to stretch my slice of toast further, trying not to stare desperately at the eggs Dad had made for himself and Calista for breakfast.

If I wanted it, I had to buy it and cook it myself. Except Calista hated me cooking anything more elaborate than toast in her precious kitchen, and my allowance barely covered necessities like shampoo, tampons, and medications, let alone my own groceries. And I reflected that state of being – my hip bones jutting out from my skin, my flesh dipping in and out of my rib cage. Some days I think I could never stop eating.

Calista was huffing about her workload, and how she needed a break – as if she hadn't gone to Mexico, or scheduled spa weekends with her friends every other week. As if she didn't book her haircuts and beauty appointments monthly, her skin permanently stained a flawless honey colour that didn't come from Forks' feeble sun.

"What do you do exactly?" I asked politely, sipping at a glass of milk, and wishing for caffeine. My one indulgence that neither had commented on, was the jumbo coffee I made myself with their fancy beans, on their shiny chrome machine, and took with me to school. Dad had even bought me a travel coffee mug home from Mexico, with a hideous rainbow flower pattern on it.

"I'm a family psychologist," Calista said, and I froze before I started to laugh.

It wasn't the sort of laugh I could dismiss as an in-joke or something. It was a genuine, hysterical laughter of someone who has been beaten down, who is a little bitter, and may have given up. I couldn't stop it, my eyes welling up in amusement.

This spoilt, demanding woman was paid by people to help them have a happy family life. Probably even by blended families, trying to work out how to fit together. This woman who sulked when I snagged a muffin she had apparently made for only her and my father's consumption. A woman who liked to remind me every time my mother or sister phoned, that they didn't want to speak with me. A woman who played games with me, twisting me up and making me cower whenever I heard her voice.

"Mary-Alice," Dad snapped at me, his voice hard, his cutlery clanking angrily against his plate.

"I'm sorry," I said, between giggles, and Calista shot me a nasty look, snatching my plate – my toast unfinished – from my place, and storming into the kitchen.

My father followed her instantly, leaving me to finish my milk and giggle to myself.

"… It's only til June," I could hear my father saying soothingly.

"She's a brat," Calista's voice was high-pitched, intending for me to hear her insults. "She has no respect…"

I heard some things clatter in the kitchen, and stood up from the table, resisting the urge to snag the untouched bagel-half from my father's plate, to shovel the eggs into my mouth.

Dad came back into the dining room, shaking his head.

"You're a very unpleasant and cruel girl, Mary-Alice," he snapped at me, grabbing his cell-phone, before storming out.

Those were the last words my father ever said to me.

Sometimes, I hope they haunt him.

* * *

 

It is not a remarkable day.

Nothing to warn me, or prepare me.

Nothing to suggest that I won't ever lie in my bed again, won't finish my book, won't hand in my history essay or finish off the pint milk I left in the fridge.

I think it was better that way.

* * *

 

I am running late that last afternoon – I go to the library to return some books, and pick up a new one for my history paper, and end up being forced to help the librarian take boxes to storage since the rain is leaking through the window in her office again.

Jasper Hale is at his locker when I finally get to leave, and his gaze is on me, even when I make a face at the hideous weather outside.

"Do you… do you need a ride?" his voice is low and smooth, and I want to accept his offer. It's a miserable walk home in the cold, but doubly awful in the rain.

"No, it's okay," I said, pulling my hood over my hair. "It's only rain."

"Please, let me," his voice is almost commanding. "It wouldn't be any trouble at all."

"…Okay." I don't really know why I agree, but it's easy. Better than walking through the spring mud and slush. Alarm bells don't even go off in my head. This is mysterious, delicious Jasper Hale. Someone who could have been something to me, in a different time.

He leads me out of the back door of the school, up past the sports field. I know there's a top car park mostly used by teachers somewhere, but I've never been there. My shoes slip on the mud and rocks, and Jasper Hale is walking too fast for me to keep up.

I find myself in a muddy clearing created by massive tree roots, staring out at a carpet of trees, the school quiet behind me. There is no carpark, no road. I think I knew that, honestly.

There is mud covering my shoes, and the rain has paused for a second. My bag is heavy, I'm thirsty, and rain has seeped between my stupid coat and my sweater. Somehow, Jasper Hale is behind me.

I turn to face him; the ride home seems very faraway and unimportant right now, as he stares at me; his eyes are dark – so dark the pupil and sclera are one, almost black. Not the muddy gold I have always associated with him. His face is blank, and for the first time, I feel small. I feel tiny and insignificant and doomed as he looms over me, lean and strong.

Do I wish I had known? I don't know. My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts, and I can hear my own breathing, short and scared, even as my mind simply says, 'oh'.

I step backwards, and my heel snags on a rock. I gasped, stumbling, and dropping my school bag.

That breaks the trance, and in a second, he has me in his painful grip.

It feels like heaven and hell; it is the first time I've been touched by anyone in so long, even through my sweater and coat, and I feel like I've been released from my bubble, for a split second. But he is gripping me so tightly, I am waiting for the snap of my bones – it hurts.

His hand fisted in my hair, tangling and catching it, as he twisted my head to the side. I suddenly comprehend what is happening, and I realise I'm trembling.

His teeth sink into my throat and I didn't resist, I didn't cry out or protest.

This is how I die.

I just close my eyes and let go.

* * *

Jasper Hale did not deserve my hate, my rage. This had been my fate since I was a little girl at a funeral, my destined path.

And what was I? Nothing. I wasn't loved or cared about. My family saw me as a burden, something to be ashamed of. I had no friends, no one who would notice I was missing. I would never be found; it would take a day or two for my father to even notice something was wrong, let alone call the police.

What could they do? I was eighteen, and 'mentally disturbed'. It wouldn't take long for them to write me off; a terrible tragedy. A cautionary story. If I was very lucky, perhaps there would be a memorial page to me in the Forks High yearbook. My legacy would be my mother and sister using my disappearance as fodder for special treatment in their social circles, maybe as the hook for an inane blog.

My only regret was that death was so … slow.

Everyone likes to pretend that dying is peaceful, something you slip into, like the perfect sleep or a bathtub. Warm and reassuring, cosy and safe.

In truth, it is agony. It burns your every cell like acid and in the end, you are willing and grateful for it to just be over. You would beg for the numb, for the peace, for the nothingness.

I felt myself hit the soft earth, the mud slick against my cheek, and I could hear Jasper Hale's panicked breaths. I fell awkwardly across my bag, my science book digging into my side. I could hear footsteps, and there was a spike of hope, that I would be rescued; and then one of horror, that Jasper Hale would kill this witness too.

"Jasper!" The red-headed boy. Not my knight in shining armour; more likely, a co-conspirer. "Jasper, what have you done?"

It's okay, it's okay. It's almost over.

The warm wetness on my throat is drying, flowing slowly. I am cold and hot, all at once. There is conversation, but it is muffled to my ears, and I am frustrated and exhausted; I want this to be over.

Arms gather me up, and there is a strange rushing sound. The air is colder, and it's raining again. There is a dull thump, and then I am dumped inelegantly into my shallow grave, my school bag underneath me, and a mess of mud and leaves spread over me.

I wonder how far from Forks we are.

I wonder how the redheaded boy knew where to find us.

And I wonder what sort of creatures the Hales are.

How many classmates have they hidden away and buried? How many dead girls are forgotten in the forest, covered in mud and never found?

But it doesn't matter.

Today is here, monsters are real, and I am dead.

* * *

_"… Alone… what were you thinking?!"_

_"I didn't…it was… just too much."_

* * *

 

The knot of pain in my head throbs and bursts; a supernova of light, hot agony, and then, the visions. Oh god, the visions.

It is too much, everything the little white pills hold back washing over me, and I cannot make it stop.

I cannot even scream.

* * *

_"… poor girl. That poor, innocent girl."_

_"Carlisle, it was an accident. Nothing you could have done."_

_"I should have…"_

* * *

It is endless, and it doesn't even make sense.

Jasper Hale's blood-splattered front; three empty desks in homeroom; the Chief of Police speaking to his daughter gently, who turns out to be Former-Broken-Leg Girl.

My father and Calista going about their lives, never checking my untouched bedroom.

It is fragmented chaos, and it won't stop.

I just want to die.

* * *

_"We have to leave…"_

_"Bella… talk to Jacob and... graduation..."_

_"We'll make it work."_

* * *

It's okay, it's okay. It's almost over.

Rest in peace, Mary-Alice Brandon.

_Fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry ^_^ That was how I always intended to finish it. I liked the idea that Alice might be dead, or maybe in Jasper and Edward's panic, he didn't quite finish her off.
> 
> But I did start messing around with a continuation, so it is up to everyone what they would like to read next: a continuation of this verse, after Jasper kills Alice (as yet untitled); OR an AU entitled Memento Vivere, which would show what would happen if Alice and Jasper actually got to know each other. And deltagirl74 suggested a Jasper POV, which is a great idea. Let me know which you would prefer to read first!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Some Story Notes:
> 
> \- No, Alice was not Jasper's singer. Jasper very much reacted to Alice's intense emotions, most of which were negative (loneliness, depression, fear, hopelessness etc), and the fact that she watched people too closely for the Cullens' comfort. And Jasper would have felt Alice's emotions more intensely because of whom they could have been to each other.
> 
> \- Carlisle desperately wanted to help Alice, and definitely saw her as a high-risk patient; for both suicide, and in case her father locked her back up in a psych hospital. He did not consider changing her because of the Bella Factor, and because after Rosalie (and Emmett), he swore not to change anyone again. Plus, Alice wasn't actively dying.
> 
> \- When I continue writing in this universe, there will be fallout with the Wolf Pack regarding Jasper's attack on Alice. The treaty was irrevocably broken, even if Edward and Jasper dumped her body outside of the Quileute's borders.


End file.
